KCRag Forum

Discuss items in the urban core outside of Downtown as described above. Everything in the core including the east side (18th & Vine area), Plaza, Westport, Brookside, Valentine, Waldo, 39th street, & the entire midtown area.

earthling wrote:Plans to convert to mixed use with 4 story apts. Whatever goes there, am hoping they do streetfront retail.

A partnership involving Lawrence developer Doug Compton has a contract to buy the Uptown Shoppes and plans to spend up to $45 million turning the shopping center into a mixed-use property.

"The general plan is to do a four-story apartment complex on top (of the 85,000-square-foot shopping center) and possibly a hotel on a pad site," said Bill Fleming, general counsel for the architecture firm TreanorHL and Compton's partner in the Uptown Shoppes deal.

Fleming cautioned that the Uptown Shoppes deal is still "very preliminary."

"We have to work with (the LCRA) to get title to the property," he said. "We've not filed any plans yet. And we've just started the process of penciling things out."

brewcrew1000 wrote:

chaglang wrote:Is this when HKC shows up and tries to preserve the shopping center?

Unless free bus service can be pulled off, wouldn't mind seeing a TIF free garage built in the lot with streetfront retail and some apts on top. TIF is acceptable if garage is free to public, and the neighborhood should be OK with it if more spots than exists today. Perhaps charge for events at most. But would rather get free fare bus system going.

"The general plan is to do a four-story apartment complex on top (of the 85,000-square-foot shopping center) and possibly a hotel on a pad site," said Bill Fleming, general counsel for the architecture firm TreanorHL and Compton's partner in the Uptown Shoppes deal.

This statement makes me very nervous as for the design because it sounds as if they want to maintain the strip mall design by simply stacking apartments on top of it. I fear the project could end up looking something like this project down in Overland Park:

Furthermore, the "pad site hotel" comment makes it also sound as if they might want to stick a "highway" style hotel in the middle of the parking lot, like this...

And this is a residential project being built on top of existing retail in Lawrence. If I remember right, the building was built to absurd tolerances that allows for this. It's not an apples to apples comparison, but he has done it before:

tower wrote:March 2016. Since MAC was specifically mentioned, they are probably the most serious potential buyers, and they would want to add residential. I would imagine that if they bought the Uptown Shoppes, they would want to get their hands on the Knickerbocker Apartments as well.

Whatever happens, any project should include purchase and renovating the Knickerbocker Apartments as part of the deal. Something needs to get done soon with the Knickerbocker building because historic tax credits are being threatened on both the state and federal level. Republicans seem hell-bent on ending these credits.

The Knickerbocker Apts are owned by KC Life, and are not a part of the LCRA's project. But they are in the PIEA's Ellison/Knickerbocker redevelopment area, and so a developer could come up with a plan that would qualify for a property tax break.

Thus why I said the Uptown Shoppes redevelopment should include "purchase and renovating the Knickerbocker Apartments...."

It makes sense to combine the two projects because the Knickerbocker building has sat vacant for too long, and needs to get redeveloped. It would benefit the Uptown Shoppes property ownership to have the KB redeveloped and not sitting vacant adjacent to their property. The Uptown property could also provide off-street parking for KB residents; and management could be shared. In addition, volume purchasing of materials would reduce the costs of adding new apartments on both parcels, since the developer could get a better deal on appliances, cabinets, bathroom fixtures, flooring, furnaces, central air units, plumbing, etc.

It just makes sense to do them at the same time. I'm surprised MAC didn't buy the KB and renovate it when they renovated the Ambassador. Maybe they tried.

It would be surprising if MAC hadn’t tried to buy the Knicks. That project is in their wheelhouse. But has KC Life renovated or sold any of their vacant properties in Valentine? They are the black hole of property management.

chaglang wrote:It would be surprising if MAC hadn’t tried to buy the Knicks. That project is in their wheelhouse. But has KC Life renovated or sold any of their vacant properties in Valentine? They are the black hole of property management.

Didn't they own the northern part of the school on SW Tfwy that's being redeveloped? Other than that, seems like they've just been sitting on property waiting for the market to get better.

Someone needs to tell them that isn't how investment works. You can't just sit on large swaths of undeveloped land and dilapidated buildings and expect to get a decent return on your investment. Property values won't go up unless development happens, but they are preventing that.

brewcrew1000 wrote:I kind of wish people were taxed higher for just sitting on land or taxed for leaving stores go vacant then they get tax breaks for doing something with the building or leasing out the building

You mean incentivizing growth across the board instead of subsidizing inactivity and speculation by a smaller group with concentrated wealth? That’s just crazy talk!